FStream is a really neat streaming radio program for the iPhone. Although it supports various WMA streams, I found that it did not successfully work with some of the Australian ABC WMA streaming radio services.

The most reliable method seems to simply use a low-bandwidth MP3 stream over HTTP (24 kbps sounds fine and works great even over Edge). I could find a number of other blogs, etc. with static methods for streaming, but nothing that reliably did on-the-fly conversion of an incoming stream.

My solution is simple Python HTTP server I'm calling stream2mp3. It uses mplayer, lame and a few pipes to take the incoming stream (which is pretty much anything mplayer can handle, which is pretty much anything unencrypted) and spit it out as a low-bandwidth MP3 stream over HTTP.

It seems to reliably handle dropped and closed connections, and clean-up after itself. I'd certainly be interested in any bug fixes or suggestions. I guess the major disadvantages is you need a dedicated server (get yourself a linode!), it only handles one connection at a time, and if you want multiple stations I guess you run multiple instances on different ports.

With this, you can be sitting in traffic on the 101 heading to San Francisco and, with some local radio, it's just like you're sitting in traffic on the M2 in Sydney! Here's a screenshot:

~/bin$ python stream2mp3.py
Creating WAV fifo /tmp/incoming.wav
Creating MP3 fifo /tmp/output.mp3
Serving <mms://media3.abc.net.au/702Sydney> on port XXXX
mplayer running as 8524
lame running as 8525
mobile-XXX-XXX-130-107.mycingular.net - - [23/Dec/2008 18:59:22] "GET / HTTP/1.1" 200 -
[radio plays until I stop it...]
connection lost
cleanup complete, ready

posted at: Tue, 23 Dec 2008 00:00 | in /toys | permalink | add comment (1 others)

I recently purchased a Grace ITC-IR1000 Wifi Radio from Beach Audio.

There seem to be a number of competing products available at the moment, and it seems they are all based on the Reciva internet radio platform. This appears to be an ARM based system running Linux (checkout the GPL compliance area).

It has built-in wireless, so connects up directly to your 802.11 network. It supports WEP and WPA; entering the WPA key is a little like entering your high score on an arcade game with a built-in scrolling alphabet. It supports all sorts of codecs, including the most important Real, WMA and MP3.

Once on the network, it contacts Reciva service (free) to update and download channel lists. Once there, you can select stations filtered by region (Europe, Oceania, etc) then country. There are literally thousands to choose from, and users can contribute streams which are filtered by Reciva and added to the database periodically. An excellent feature is the ability to log-in to the website and both build favourite lists and add your own personal streams. You then register your radio's serial number with the website and on the next channel update you get access to your lists.

It also offers you the opportunity to connect to a local PC to stream music from folders there; I haven't looked into this feature at all.

Overall, it's a great device. The audio quality is great, and it seems to have at least a little sub-woofer built in. It has some nice features; 5 of the buttons on the front are quick access preset buttons, just hold it down when you are listening to the station and it remembers it. It supports a wide range of streams, the interface is simple to understand, it keeps the clock via NTP and directly connecting to the wireless is great.

My ideal application is for a bedside clock radio, so I can listen to .au radio as I go to sleep and wake up. It has an inbuilt back-lit clock, sleep timer and alarm system, but they all take a bit of fiddling. The buttons are small and black, which doesn't help in the dark, and most access is done via the big scroll wheel which you press to make a selection (think iPod). However, the resistance of the rubber pads is less than that the pressure required to push the button in, so it really takes two hands. This means when you want to setup an alarm and put on the sleep timer as you go to bed there is a bit of fiddling through menus, etc. Also, as it is playing the clock seems to go away. Initially I had a problem with firewall ports, but it doesn't seem a big issue on the forums so it must have just been me.

I also wonder what happens when Reciva go out of business, because all the tuning happens via their website. Something similar happened when 3com Audrey support was dropped; it then became a matter of faking DNS replies. Sniffing the protocol might be fun :)

All in all, although it sounds a little silly, if you know what you want it for this is a great little system. I imagine any expat will get their money's worth listening to home radio stations. If you're only interested in local radio, I'd still suggest the best thing is still probably (surprise, surprise) a radio. It leaves a little to be desired as a bedside radio but is otherwise a very nice toy!

2009-02-20 This has turned out to be one of the more popular things I have ever posted, so I should provide an update. There have been several firmware updates released with a range of new features, the most notable being able to hook up to Pandora and Sirius.

Other than that, there have been some nice updates such as allowing the wireless to stay connected in the background, reducing the time between turning on and getting radio sounds out, and a few display updates like displaying the time while radio is playing.

I have played around a bit more with the local media streaming; I found it quite unintuitive and difficult to use. I set up my entire MP3 collection as a Samaba share and pointed the radio at it, but it choked scanning the directory and the few thousand files. I found the only practical way was to setup a separate share with just a few things in it and create a .m3u playlist. Trying to navigate through many songs on the little screen just isn't great.

posted at: Fri, 21 Mar 2008 22:43 | in /toys | permalink | add comment (8 others)

Just a quick note for Google on setting up a newly purchased iPhone on an AT&T GoPhone pre-pay plan, rather than the contract plan. Although the plans kind of suck, you might like to do this if you don't have a social security number or credit history.

Several forums mention using an all-9's SSN or an all 1's SSN in the signup field. As of 4th March, 2008, these are not working. You need a different SSN which can be provided by AT&T (a hint, it has a lot of 1's and a 4, although I get the feeling they change this as too many people discover it). This will have the effect of failing the credit check, and even though you have to go through and agree to all the contract terms it will then present you with prepay options.

Hopefully that saves some people time setting up their new iPhone!

posted at: Tue, 04 Mar 2008 21:58 | in /toys | permalink | add comment (0 others)

Although the documenation doesn't mention it, I just tried a 2GiB SO-DIMM in my Dell X1 laptop and it works fine, although it does seem to lose the inbuilt 256MiB. The chip I got was a 2GiB PC2-5300 CL5 200 Pin SODIMM which has the bonus of also being sligtly faster than what I had before.

Old : 1196 MB in  2.00 seconds = 598.21 MB/sec
New : 1344 MB in  2.00 seconds = 671.89 MB/sec

To install, you only need undo the screws marked with "K" and then flip the keyboard up (crappy photo). It required a bit of force to seat the DIMM properly, at first I thought it wasn't working but a bit of a push and it was fine. If I could afford a solid state drive, I rekon I could rename my new memory enhanced laptop a "Dell Air"!

posted at: Thu, 17 Jan 2008 13:46 | in /toys | permalink | add comment (0 others)

We recently picked up our new Honda Civic Hybrid, to replace our out-of-lease Audi A3. The short answer is, it seems to be a great car.

When you first get in it feels quite spacious, although the front dash is kind of large and imposing. At first I thought this was to accommodate batteries, but they are actually behind the rear seat (meaning in the hybrid you can not lay the seats down). It has plenty of hidey-holes to store stuff, most of which have a pull-over cover.

The drivers position is quite fine, although visibility probably isn't as good as in the older Audi. The steering wheel seems a little small, but the built-in controls are good. One thing I miss from the Audi is a space on the right of the accelerator to rest your foot, which is especially good for long periods on cruise control. The digital speedo is above the other controls and quite large, and is very visible to all your passengers (maybe this is an added safety feature!).

There is annoyingly little actual information about the "Integrated Motor Assist" system, other than it assists the motor and charges when you brake. There is a little indicator that tells you how much assistance it is giving, and conversely how much it is charing when you coast or brake. When you brake to a halt it goes into "auto stop" mode, where everything is off. The electric motor seems to take you from standing for about 2 seconds, presumably whilst the petrol engine starts up. It is quite smart about keeping the engine ticking on hills, but it does roll backwards just slightly.

When coasting, it seems that the engine goes idle, or at least the current fuel consumption gauge goes to zero. When the engine flicks back to charge mode there is a little whirring noise from somewhere under the dash, and when starting on electric the car does have a sort of subtle shudder; other than you wouldn't really notice.

The CV transmission is fantastic, and makes for a very smooth ride, especially on cruise control which doesn't have to hunt for gears. It is quite strange putting your foot down and just having the car accelerate with no noticeable gear changes. It has plenty of power for getting around town, and goes OK in the above 100km/h range. Even carrying 5 people it didn't seem to struggle. It gets around car parks just fine, and the steering is very, very smooth (new tyres probably help, however).

For some reason you can't shut of the two innermost air-conditioning vents, but otherwise the climate control works great. At least in Australia the interior has a touch of the Henry Ford about it: you can have it in any colour as long at is it beige. The rims are standard too, but look quite nice and modern.

Minor annoyances are lack of a switch-blade style key (they take up less pocket room) and, more annoyingly, lack of a remote boot unlock feature. This is something that comes in very handy when you have hands full of shopping, or a trombone and related paraphernalia. I also like the Audi hydraulic arm that kept the bonnet open, not that I plan to be under there much. Not that you'd want to touch anything, the two large red cables from the 158V batteries look like they could pack quite a punch.

It has a few less flashy features than the Prius, but it by no means feels like like a cheaper car. And the satisfaction you get from sitting in traffic (a fact of life in Sydney) using zero petrol is pretty good!

Click below for some of the photos.

Update : We've just returned from a road trip from Sydney to Melbourne and back, covering 2170km. This was essentially all highway driving on cruise control at around 100-110km/h, with full boot of luggage. The trip computer tells us we averaged 5.8L/100km, which is a fair way off the 4.6L/100km claimed in the Green Vehicle Guide. A new 1.4L petrol Fiat Punto travelling with us on the way down also was running at under 6L/100km. In normal inner-Sydney driving we average 6.8L/100km, and the lowest we have achieved is 5.4L/100km whilst driving around the M2-M7-M5 loop when the new Lane Cove tunnel opened, which was often at lower speeds (80-90km/h) than open highway driving.

posted at: Fri, 13 Apr 2007 15:54 | in /toys | permalink | add comment (3 others)

Dick Smith are selling the Brother HL-2040 laser printer for what seems like a very cheap price of $89. It even says on the box it comes with a toner good for 2500 pages, so it doesn't seem to be the usual trick of a cartridge just full enough to print a test page before requiring an expensive purchase.

I fully expected to have to learn how CUPS worked, since previously I'd only ever printed to already setup printers. However, all I had to do was install the Debian packages for the LPR and CUPS drivers from the support page and plug it in (via USB) and, somehow, it magically worked. Big marks for shipping working packages for a range of distributions.

However, a big negative is that the LPR bit is proprietary. Unsurprising, since I assume the printer has almost no in-bulit logic, but disappointing none the less. Thus you of course can't use it on anything but your standard 32bit x86, which probably sucks if you want to hook it up to a printer sharing box or something (of course CUPS can network share it). And although it works now, there is always the chance it will break horribly in the future.

I think it is fairly low resolution compared with more expensive models, but it looks fine to me. The only annoyance is that the paper comes out extremely curled. This has a number of disadvantages; firstly your output doesn't sit right, secondly you need to keep a careful eye on the output tray because eventually pages will go everywhere and thirdly, I would be very worried about running it back through a second time to print on the back, since it looks like it would jam it up easily.

For someone on a budget who occasionally prints out a few things from their x86 Linux box, this printer is fine. If you were using it on a daily basis I think it would get very annoying, and I'd probably look for a more expensive model that doesn't curl the pages as much and has less chance of breaking in the future due to software bit-rot. Also, don't forget that printers don't come with a cable. I would highly recommend one such as pictured below, which as you can see has the "Proprietary look and feel of unsurpassed quality"!

posted at: Tue, 06 Feb 2007 09:46 | in /toys | permalink | add comment (0 others)

I've enjoyed Ars Technica for a long time, even from the pre-history before RSS when you had to remember what sites you liked to visit. Having an interest in computer architecture, I thus grabbed (a signed copy of) Jon Stokes' Inside the Machine quickly when it came out.

Having learnt what I know about architecture the "traditional" way (e.g. textbooks and courses) I was interested in the "beginners guide" approach. The early parts of the book, explaining the basics of microprocessors, rely quite heavily on analogies (the "file clerk", the "document storage room", the "SUV factory" etc). Personally, I'm not sure how much this aids the understanding of the material — for mine the length of time spent describing the analogies gets in the way of the material. I understand, however, that I am not the target market for the early part of the book. The introduction to instruction encoding with the "DLW" architecture serves as a good illustration; it is the type of stuff I think should be in every introductory CS course. The diagrams throughout are very clear, and it really lives up to its billing as an "illustrated guide".

For mine, what is most impressive is the later chapters, which are an unrivalled review of x86 and PowerPC architecture. They are clearly well researched, and step you through the architecture and its history logically and clearly. The level of detail is perfect, giving you more than enough depth to understand what is happening but not bothering to delve into irrelevant esoteric implementation details which would simply make the book fatter (c.f. H&P). If you've studied architecture before you can skip to Chapter 5 and dive into this bit straight away.

If you have more than a passing interest, I still think investing in a copy of Hennessy and Patterson and plowing through the first few chapters (and appendixes) is an unrivalled introduction. But this book is about 1/3rd as thick, much easier reading and, more importantly, is the only current compendium on modern (i.e. still in production/development) architectures. I shudder to think how long was spent pouring over architecture manuals, whitepapers and old HOTCHIPS papers to distill the useful information it contains. Computer architecture is a fascinating art, and this book may well be the best passport to the otherwise inaccessible city of transistors just below your fingertips.

posted at: Fri, 12 Jan 2007 10:16 | in /toys | permalink | add comment (0 others)

I received for Christmas a cool little LCD scrolling panel. Of course the first thing I did was sniff the crappy Windows control program to figure out how to program it.

It doesn't have a particular brand name that I can see, but it comes up as a Prolific USB to Serial converter when plugged in. It looks like the photos below.

The protocol to program it, if you could call it that, consists of sending at 9600 baud, N81, a leading byte 0xAA followed by a one byte number between 1 and 5 for the scroll speed, your message of up to 73 characters (more makes it crash) and a trailing byte of 0xCC.

I have written lcd-scroller program to control it. QA seems to be pretty poor on this thing; send too many characters and it locks up or resets, and occasionally it shows PLEASE WRITE AGAIN! for no apparent reason. However, it's still fun to stream an RSS feed of the cricket scores or similar!

posted at: Tue, 26 Dec 2006 18:48 | in /toys | permalink | add comment (0 others)

I just came across an article on Salon lamenting the death of BASIC called "Why Johnny can't code". It reminded me of the the following photo, which clearly shows why I can code.

I don't know the exact date, but the fluro shoelaces gives a pretty good time-frame. Thanks to my Dad for firstly buying the Commodore 64, and then scanning in a bunch of old photos 15 years later!

posted at: Thu, 14 Sep 2006 13:45 | in /toys | permalink | add comment (0 others)

The Philips DVDR77 is a DVD+RW recorder with an inbuilt PCMICA media reader, which due to apparent obsolence can be found quite cheap. To make it region free the easiest way is to use a Palm Pilot

1. Download OmniRemote (the download version is a 15 day free trial).
2. You need to send code RC6 (Codeset 4, Key 235) to the DVD. OmniPhilips955.pdb is an OmniRemote database with a big button to send this code.
3. From the system menu of the DVD, select the 5th item and change the remote control type to DVD Player.
4. Use OmniRemote to send the code to the DVD. It should now be showing dashes (- - - - - -). I had to press the button a few times before it seemed to register.
5. videohelp.com has the procedure to enter the region free code from here. Enter 121212005255 and then PLAY.
6. Reset the DVD remote type.

There is also a firmware upgrade (direct link).

posted at: Sun, 25 Sep 2005 18:01 | in /toys | permalink | add comment (0 others)

morrison, my old AlphaPC 164 has finally had it's last shutdown -h. Rescued on a mercy mission to Canberra it has served me well for many years. Sure, it had it's quirks; the ATX power supply modified with a paper clip, no off switch, noise and heat to rival a coal mine and an infuriating ability to not detect a keyboard and thus default to the serial port, rather than the VGA card (that one had me going for hours).

Ultimately it's 266MHz Alpha has been replaced by a processor almost 10 times its clock speed and half its word size, but not appreciably faster handling the mail and file serving tasks it did so well. It's tough to survive in a world when you can be replaced by a processor, all-in-one motherboard and RAM for just over $200.

Now I have to double check all the security alerts to make sure I'm not vulnerable to the latest stupid buffer overflow. But I do have a nice big RAID5 array to hold MP3's.

If anyone is interested in a slightly used Alpha with a few extras it could be exchanged for some form of alcohol.

posted at: Tue, 12 Jul 2005 16:37 | in /toys | permalink | add comment (0 others)

Especially when that toy comes from SGI

... there's a really big box here for you ...

New Altix 350, $lots. Shipping it to UNSW, $lots. Watching them play with the box ... priceless

Hopefully we can get this to boot so we can be super-cool like everyone else :)

posted at: Thu, 28 Apr 2005 22:25 | in /toys | permalink | add comment (0 others)

I've recently got great service from two companies online, so credit where credit is due.

• www.camerastore.com.au : I ordered a Canon IXUS 30 camera and it arrived at about 9:00am the next morning. They were also the cheapest price I could find!
• I ordered some business cards from Salt Media in Western Australia. The first batch were wrong because of some stupid overprint thing that only shows up when you print, the guys kindly offered a half price reprint even though it was really my fault. Tip: ask for a proof, always. Great price, too.

posted at: Wed, 16 Mar 2005 22:01 | in /toys | permalink | add comment (0 others)

I recently picked up the Yamaha TSS-15W from Dick Smith.

I had previously invested in a Joytech Switch Box which is a great product at $100 (I've seen them Electronics Boutique and some Harvey Normans, where they were slightly cheaper) which switches 4 SCART, S-Video, Composite Video and, most impressivley Optical Audio.

Seeing as my digitial set top box and DVD had optical output, my primary requirement was that the speaker system have optical inputs -- the TSS-15 fits this perfectly with two optical inputs and one coaxial digital input (plus one normal stero input).

Then an Xbox advanced av pack, a few optical and s-video cables later and I'm really happy with the results. If you are buying optical cables, the cheapest ones I could find were at JB Hi-Fi and were labeled as minidisk cables ($12), but as long as it has the TOS-link end you should be right. I saw some that had gold plated ends -- on an optical cable! People will pay extra for anything.

The TSS-15 does everything you could want -- it does all the usual Dolby this and that, including the Pro Logic modes that turn 2 channel input into 5.1 channel output (by default it automatically switches around). The speakers are really small but surprisingly loud; for normal living room use they are great and go up louder than I can bear to listen to them. The subwoofer is also fine, though it's not separately powered (passive subwoofer?) it has some special design that makes it good, apparently.

The remote is quite functional, giving you control over the current input, Dobly modes and a special "night mode" which seems to just cut the bass and up the treble.

For me, the upgrade to S-Video everywhere and surround sound has been fantasitic. The separate switch box with optical switching has allowed me to upgrade really easily -- for example many of the cheaper dvd all in one systems (~$800) only come with one or two digial inputs -- not enough if you want the x-box or other extras.

The only problems with the system are minor -- the ends of the speakers all have an RCA connector, which means you have to have a very wide speaker stand if you are to run the wire down the middle of it; else you have to cut and re-solder the ends (as I did). I picked up some very cheap stands also from Dick Smith, really designed for another model. With a bit of double sided tape they stick on, but don't look perfect. If Yamaha had created stands for the speakers I'm sure we would have bought them.

One thing I have noticed is that when Digital TV advertises the separate "Dolby" audio channel, it always seems to be only 2 channel output. This means that the Yamaha correctly detects the input as 5.1 channel input, but only two of the speakers are working. I'm not sure if this is the TV broadcasting or the Opentel box.

posted at: Tue, 08 Mar 2005 11:20 | in /toys | permalink | add comment (0 others)

I recently purchased the Opentel ODT4200 PVR from oznetics for $460. I bought via ebay and picked up from them and had problems at all; in fact they were very helpful.

Overall, we are quite happy with the unit. It has a large enough 80GB harddisk, and most importantly two tuners so you can watch one channel whilst recording another. Unlike the more expensive models, you can not record two channels at once. There is also no way to access files (USB or Firewire, etc) though the box comes with instructions on how to upgrade the harddrive should you wish to. The remote is a good size and very functional.

As I said, we are quite happy, but there are a few points of annoyance. I am running the latest 1.27 firmware. Some of the issues, both bugs and wishlist include:

• The recording interface is quite unintuitive. When you add a "reservation" after selecting the time you automatically start a new reservation. Should you wish to change the file name for the recorded program, you need to go into the list of reservations and select one you added, and then modify the file name.
• The reservation list only shows the channel and date and time information for your reservations. It would be nice if this showed the filename it is going to record to. It would be nice to have a few more reservation options, like "only do this on weekdays" or "repeat this 13 times".
• There are many digital channels, most of which you want to skip over for normal use (some, like high def you want to skip all the time). The Opentel has a nice feature of favourites which allow you to group only the channels you want into one of a few favourites groups. However, one more than one occasion the box has become a bit confused if I'm in favourites mode or all channels mode requiring about five switches between modes and random channel changing, etc to come back.
• On more than one occasion it has been randomly unable to lock onto channels and simply displays a black screen. The only way to get it to come back is to power cycle the box. This may be a heat issue as we have the box in a cupboard, and has not been a major issue.
• If a show is recording, you can not modify in any way any of your existing recordings. This means changing their filenames, deleting an existing recording, etc.
• I'm not sure what the deal is with the 4:3, 16:9 and letterbox formats. There is an "auto" format which seems to just be 16:9 mode. It would be nice if it just used 4:3 for non-widescreen broadcasts and letterbox when it was.
• Fast forward using the time slider (rather than just kicking into 2x, 4x or 16x speedup this mode shows a standard time bar that you move a pointer along) occasionally gets confused. When this happens it generally ends up playing the audio for where you stopped but displaying a paused static image from where you left off. What would be really nice is if a tap of the [>|] button skipped 30 seconds, and hold it down to "slide" the time. As it is, you can get the feel of how long to hold down the button to slide past most of the ads after a few shows :)
• "Time-shift" for pausing live TV is basically useless. Once you have started the time shift, you can't swap channels without stopping the recording and you can't rewind. So you might as well just start a normal recording, which you can watch back whilst it is recording anyway.
• Some of the error messages are in engrish.
• It can get very hot, though we do keep it in a cabinet. Turn the box "off" spins down the harddrive but it still remains quite warm to touch.
• The harddrive appears to be almost constantly churning away. You can't hear it in normal operation with the TV playing, but it does make you wonder what it is doing. I can only assume it is a background defragmenter to try and keep space contiguous.
• Guide information is only for the current and next show. This is a network thing, not a Opentel thing.
• Channel 10 has some white dots which are apparently due to overscan from incorrectly (that might be a bit strong, I don't fully understand) broadcast VBI information.

In conclusion, the above bugs are all annoyances, and in most day to day use the unit works fine. This is a great unit if you don't want to hit the $900 mark for the Topfield model or spend more time fiddling with MythTV than watching TV. I wouldn't say we watch that much, but it's nice to be able to record the good stuff and watch it at your leisure and the Opentel works great for us.

posted at: Fri, 11 Feb 2005 21:29 | in /toys | permalink | add comment (12 others)